Television in South Africa
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Although economically the most advanced country on the continent, South Africa was among the last countries in Africa to introduce television.
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Controversy over introduction of TV
The reason for television's late arrival in South Africa was ideological, as the white minority regime saw it as a threat to its control of the broadcasting media, even though the state-controlled South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) had a virtual monopoly on radio broadcasting. It also saw the new medium as a threat to Afrikaans, and to the Afrikaner volk, giving undue prominence to English, and creating unfair competition for the Afrikaans press.
The National Party's Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, Dr Albert Hertzog, said that TV would come to South Africa 'over my dead body', also denouncing it as 'a miniature bioscope [cinema] over which parents would have no control', while the influential Dutch Reformed Church, saw the new medium as degenerate and immoral.
However, many white South Africans, including Afrikaners, did not share Hertzog's reactionary views, and regarded the hostility towards what he called 'the little black box' as absurd and embarrassing. When Neil Armstrong became the first man to set foot on the moon in 1969, South Africa was one of the few countries unable to watch the event live. Other (less economically advanced) countries in Africa had already introduced it, while neighbouring Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, had introduced television in 1961, with the financial backing of some South African private investors.
The introduction of TV in 1976
In 1971, the SABC was finally allowed to introduce a television service, which began experimental broadcasts in the main cities in mid-1975, before the service went nationwide at the beginning of 1976. In common with most of Western Europe, South Africa used the PAL system for colour television. Initially, the TV service was funded entirely through a licence fee, as in the UK, but advertising began in 1978.
When South African television launched, it was only the second terrestrial TV service in Africa to launch with a colour service only, whereas all other TV stations would have started in black-and-white first, then colour later. (Zanzibar in Tanzania was the first territory in Africa to have done so, in 1973.) The Government, advised by SABC technicians, took the view that colour television would have to be available so as to avoid a costly change from black-and-white.
The service only broadcast in English and Afrikaans, with an emphasis on religious programming on Sundays. Owing to South Africa's apartheid policies, the British actors' union Equity started a boycott of programme sales to South Africa, meaning that most acquired programming came from the United States. However, the British police drama series The Sweeney was briefly shown on SABC, but dubbed in Afrikaans.
In 1981, a second channel was introduced, broadcasting in African languages such as Zulu, Xhosa Sotho and Tswana. The main channel, now called TV1, was divided evenly between English and Afrikaans. Subtitling on TV was almost non-existent, the assumption being that people had no desire to watch programmes in languages they did not speak.
In 1986, the SABC's monopoly on TV was challenged by the launch of a subscription-based service known as M-Net, backed by a consortium of newspaper publishers. However, it could not broadcast its own news and current affairs programmes, which were still the preserve of the SABC. As the state-controlled broadcaster, the SABC was accused of bias towards the apartheid regime.
Local programming
While US programming has dominated South African TV airtime, there are now many locally produced programmes which are exported across Africa. For example, M-Net's soap opera Egoli: Place of Gold, has been exported to 43 African countries [1]. The drama series Shaka Zulu, based on the true story of the Zulu warrior King Shaka, was shown around the world in the 1980s, but this was only possible because the SABC had licensed the series to a US distributor. The Zulu-language comedy 'Sgudi 'Snaysi achieved SABC's highest viewing figures in the late 1980s, and was shown in Zimbabwe and Swaziland.
Imported programming
Owing to the British Equity boycott, and a similar boycott by Australia, South African TV has been dominated by programming from the United States, and it was only after the end of apartheid that the boycott was lifted, and non-US programming became available.
The availability of US programming was partly the result of a co-operative venture with Universal Studios in 1980 where an episode of 'Knight Rider' was filmed in the Namib desert in South West Africa (today Namibia), and local acting talent was involved in the filming. As a direct consequence, the SABC received the right to broadcast in American programming syndicated from Universal Studios/MCA, and through them purchased material from other studios.
Many imported programmes were dubbed into Afrikaans, the first being the British series The Sweeney, known in Afrikaans as Blitspatrolie. However, in order to accommodate English speakers, the SABC began to simulcast the original soundtrack of US series such as Miami Vice and Beverly Hills, 90210 on FM radio. This also applied to German and Dutch programmes dubbed in Afrikaans.
Political change
Following the easing of media censorship under F. W. de Klerk, the SABC's news coverage moved towards being more objective, although many feared that once the African National Congress came to power, the SABC would revert to type, and serve the government of the day. However, the SABC now also carried CNN International's TV news bulletins, thereby giving South African viewers new sources of international news.
In 1996, two years after the ANC came to power, the SABC reorganised its three TV channels, so as to be more representative of different language groups. This resulted in the downgrading of Afrikaans, which now had its airtime reduced, a move that angered many Afrikaans speakers. This might be due to the fact that the majority of licence fees are paid by English and Afrikaans speakers.
New Services
However, the SABC's dominance was further eroded by the launch of the first 'free-to-air' private TV channel, called e.tv. Satellite television also expanded, as M-Net's parent company, Multichoice, launched its digital satellite TV service (DStv).
DStv offered viewers in South Africa, and elsewhere on the continent, a far greater choice of channels, including international services like CNN, MTV, BBC World, BBC Prime, Discovery Channel, Sky News and ESPN, as well as channels such as Zee TV in Indian languages and RTP Internacional in Portuguese. There were also SABC channels aimed at viewers in the rest of Africa, a business channel, Summit TV, and a music channel, called Channel O, while KykNet catered for Afrikaans speakers.
In 2003, the New South African TV channel (NSAT) announced plans to broadcast on Sky Digital in the UK, thereby reaching the large expatriate community. It began broadcasting in 2004, but suspended broadcasts a year later. However, SABC news programming is carried on the Original Black Entertainment channel on satellite in the UK.
Recent newspaper reports indicated that Telkom, the parastatal telephone operator intended applying for a broadcast licence, to carry an IPTV service over its ADSL network, to compete with DStv. There is no cable TV service in South Africa as the low population density of the country has meant that it is not cost-effective. (The term 'cable' is wrongly used to describe M-Net's terrestrial pay-TV service). However, the second network operator in South Africa may provide such services, along with fixed-line telephony and broadband internet.